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Mobile Rigs and Licensing?

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KR0SIV

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Hello all,

I'm a licensed amateur radio operator and I've been trying to get my family to get their licenses as well for emergencies at the very least... None of them however wish to take the time to study for the exam.

I'm trying to figure out how I could get a mobile radio for their vehicles legally that they could operate without a license. I know FRS is available for non-licensed users. However to my knowledge the radios cannot have a detachable antenna. I've never seen a mobile radio without a detachable antenna.

Anyone here know of a way I can get my family on the air from their cars without them having to get licensed?

I can get them little FRS radios but they are not all that useful inside a vehicle.
 
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russellmaher

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Have you shown them how easy it is to pass the Technician exam? If you show them what you had to learn to get Amateur Extra, then you're probably scareing them off.

Russell
 

popnokick

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Prob most effective mobile radio and simplest license to get is General Mobile Radio Service (GMRS). You only have to be a family member of the licensee. And the reason you're not considering GMRS is...?
 

mmckenna

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A GMRS license would be ideal for this. I had the same issue, had a ham ticket but no one else wanted to get their license. A spent the $85 for 5 years and the GMRS license covers the whole family.

GMRS allows 50 watts in the UHF band. Some areas even have repeaters, but you need to get permission from the owners, it's not like amateur where repeaters are usually a free for all.

You'll need Part 95 accepted mobiles (or hand held's), modified amateur radios are not allowed.

Look for some of the older Motorola, Icom and Kenwood radios.

7 of the GMRS channels are shared with FRS, so the consumer radios you might already have will work. The other 8 channel pairs can be used in simplex mode or repeater.

It's also permissible to program a commercial Part 95 accepted radio for both GMRS and Amateur use, for your convenience.
 

KR0SIV

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Thanks for all the details guys.. I'll look into the information provided and check back in.
I have shown the family whats on the tech exam.. I either get an answer of "its too hard" or... "I don't have time to study" -_-

I'll look into GMRS, thanks again guys.
 

n5ims

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Thanks for all the details guys.. I'll look into the information provided and check back in.
I have shown the family whats on the tech exam.. I either get an answer of "its too hard" or... "I don't have time to study" -_-

I'll look into GMRS, thanks again guys.

Buy them each a study book and take a cross-country road trip (think NY to LA, not Cleveland to Pittsburg here). They'll get bored and want something to do, which is when you hand out the study books and give them something to pass the time away. On the way back a game of "what's the answer to ..." from a set of study cards may pass the time then. When you get home, rush them to a testing session and see what happens.
 

Project25_MASTR

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I find it odd gmrs want a first thought. Anyway, you get repeaters (slightly different rules when building repeaters) which behave very similarly to 70 cm (and identically to commercial) repeaters. Portable repeaters are simple only requiring two mobiles, antennas, and/or a duplexer. The service is great for long distance multi-car road trips, hunting, family businesses and ranches.

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mmckenna

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Amateur radio isn't for everyone, and expecting those that have no interest in it to get their licenses is unrealistic. While the tech license is easy, it isn't for everyone, and if someone doesn't have the interest in it, they find it extremely boring.

I went through this many years ago. I'd had my amateur license since the 1980's, and tried to get others interested in it. I finally gave up and went the GMRS route. The big benefit is that you don't need to try to get non-technical interested in something that don't really want to do.

Over a few years, GMRS worked very well, and it had the benefit of generating interest in radios. Within 5 years everyone that was using GMRS in my family got their amateur licenses. Sometimes all it takes is getting them started on the right track. That generates the interest that is needed to start down the path towards an amateur license.

For $85 bucks for the license and an investment in some basic radios, you'll get what you need without the complexity of trying to get your family interested in their amateur license. If it leads to amateur radio later, great, if not, you are good to go.
 

Otis413

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I'm going to get flamed by the SAPS for saying this, so take it for what it worth...

I just reprogrammed a UHF Motorola MaxTrac 300 for 4watt output and the 15 GMRS channels + the emergency highway repeater. I'm putting this in my wife's car for emergencys.

Because of the lack of type accepted gear for GMRS, I don't feel any guilt in doing this.
 

SCPD

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I'm going to get flamed by the SAPS for saying this, so take it for what it worth...

I just reprogrammed a UHF Motorola MaxTrac 300 for 4watt output and the 15 GMRS channels + the emergency highway repeater. I'm putting this in my wife's car for emergencys.

Because of the lack of type accepted gear for GMRS, I don't feel any guilt in doing this.

All you have to do is look at past sticky forums and you will see type accepted radios and why turn it down to 4 watts? What is a the emergency highway repeater,no such GMRS repeater exists.I do not see why you go to all this trouble and never say if you are licensed or not.


I do not see why people want to say for emergencies,that is left to the FCC to decide if they will fine you for unlicensed use and as to why you think you can use a licensed frequency "just in case".The FCC may not take it to kindly you are skirting the rules.
 

Project25_MASTR

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I didn't understand the 4W thing either. Especially since Maxtracs can over heat if they are not the 10W models operating at that low of a power output. The 8 repeater pair frequencies have a 50W max and can be used simplex. The 8 simplex only frequencies (which are shared with FRS) have the 5W max.

I think he means the .675 pair with a 141.3 PL by highway emergency repeater.
 

Otis413

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I'm still undecided about getting my GMRS license, the Maxtrac is easy to reprogram so I'm playing around with different configurations. I tried it as a 40w base station to test range up here in the mountains, (as a 70cm and GMRS radio) frankly 40w wasn't that big an improvement over 4w, so why tromp all over everybodys bubble pack radios. (they are popular with hunters in my area) antenna height seems to be the key factor up here.
Anyway, if my wife gets her Ham license, I'll reprogram it to 70cm and up the power a bit, if not I'll (we'll) get a GMRS license and I'll leave it the way it is. Maybe the FCC will get off its' *** and make a decision on GMRS and things will change, but I'm not holding my breath...

Anyway I think we're a little off the OP's subject, my point was, considering all the cooperation the FCC has shown the Radio using community, the type acceptance tag on a radio is way down on my list of worries. Keep your emissions within spec, cause no harmful interference, etc..

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These views and opinions do not necessarily represent those of RadioRefference.com, radio users in general, dogs, cats or trained monkeys, nor necessarily conform to any/all accepted standard of logic. (those that the Greeks thought up anyway,) and are not necessarily those of my employer, not necessarily mine, and probably not necessary.
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Project25_MASTR

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Why tromp all the bubble packs? Ethics aside, those finals weren't made to run at that low of a power. 40W rigs will run happily between 40W and 25W, anything else they cook themselves. 25W rigs will run happily between 25W and 10W. 10W rigs will run happily down to 1W. Outside of their specs, they have less than a 5% duty, in specs the have a 10%-30% duty.

Disclaimer*
I'm only 21 years old so most of the maxtrac/radius series (the pallet loads) I have are older than me. However, I have built a lot of repeaters out of them and used them in a lot of vehicles and seen what taking them out of spec does. I'm just trying to help save money, I'm in college after all, money that if saved could be put into, idk a gmrs license perhaps.

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Otis413

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Well, I'll add another disclaimer, I'm new to Motorola radios so anything I say might be wrong. Having said that I can only go by others experience. I read over on RepeaterBuilders.com that (the author of the web page) had used a Maxtrac in Ham repeater for many years at 5watt output to drive a 100w amp with no trouble. I followed his instructions on how to adjust the power thru the RSS.
Come to think of it he didn't mention what the original max output of the radio was...
I haven't used it enough to see if it gets hot or not, but I'll take your word for it.

There's some guy on ch 1 singing right now, prob a drunk hunter...
Yea, I think I'll skip the GMRS license and reprogram it back to 70cm, it's just as dead as GMRS around here but I already have the license..
 
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Project25_MASTR

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I've never converted the UHF but have done several 16-40 channel conversions on the vhf based of the repeater builder instructions. You can also enter any number from 01 to 99 as a channel name in the rss. Never tried the 99 channel conversion though.

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Project25_MASTR

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See I see that and just think, why not pull the finial out (the radios put out about 1/4 W w/o the finials) and use it to drive an amp. That's even mentioned on the main GM300/Maxtrac article on repeater-builder (pretty sure Batlabs even touches on it). Me and some friends have been dicking around with getting finial-less GM300's to drive Micor continuous duty PA's. Long story short, I've got some UHF and VHF GM300's and a UHF and VHF Micor repeater and just don't want to deal with crystals. Which the GM300 drives way more than needed to swing the PA. Just my thought on it.
 

rapidcharger

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Hello all,

I'm a licensed amateur radio operator and I've been trying to get my family to get their licenses as well for emergencies at the very least... None of them however wish to take the time to study for the exam.)))

I don't know the ages of your family members but a ham radio license is a good thing to have on a college application.

I know of some kids from my youth, who's dad was a ham. The son and daughter got licensed at the same time and I don't know how old they were but the younger of the two was probably about 10. I don't think they were ever active in the hobby, judging by the number of lookups on QRZ, but from the looks of things they are still licensed. And mind you these kids had passed the morse code test too.

A friend of mine and fellow member of this forum got his ticket at age 8 back when the licenses where carved into rock. :D
Really, it's not that hard. You know that. It just might require some motivation.

(((Anyone here know of a way I can get my family on the air from their cars without them having to get licensed?)))

I guess if they have vehicles, then they're probably not so young then.

Maybe it's because I'm under the weather and hopefully I am not just being delirious and writing something I will regret later but you might consider 27mhz CB radios. There's a lot of people who like to talk smack about 11m, but you did say it was for emergencies. Depending on the nature of the emergency, CB might be advantageous over the other radio services because there's more people monitoring to it. And who knows maybe after 10 minutes of listening to CB then they'll want to get their ham license. :wink:
 

K5MPH

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Try out M.U.R.S. Radios they put out 2watts and you can use an ext.antenna.....
 
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